et si domus super semet ipsam dispertiatur non poterit domus illa stare – or??

It’s been a difficult few days. All of the hope of the past year has gone, vanished with the frightening realization that our division is implacable. Rationality has no purchase here in the land of religious conversion and rebirth. As far as I can see there is nothing to look forward to, there never will be anything to look forward to, all that there is or ever will be is obstruction. Maybe I will feel optimistic again someday, but it has been a long time now that our point of stasis is virulent populism; any little deviation towards decency and intelligence is quickly pushed back.

And yet, I’ve always felt that nothing can be that depressing as long as it is not unprecedented. And there is nothing but precedent for bitterly divided populations. It must be ingrained in our nature, although I can’t quite see which evolutionary aim hating our brothers would have served. I try to drift above all of it, look down, and see us as a squabbling family. The kids form two groups, always fighting with each other. Certainly my own family divides into two groups. Which comes first? Does it start at the micro or macrocosmic level? Do we hate each other by nature or do we hate each other because of politics?

Should we just be two separate countries? Why did Lincoln fight so hard to save the Union? What would he say today? If our goal was to keep a poor country from our border, what did we gain? There is Mexico, in any case. Is it self-evident that a house divided against itself cannot stand?

I will at some point try to reach beyond the divide and recover the intelligence of conservative thought in the U.S. Nothing can hurt you too much if you understand it. But not quite yet. For the moment I will just take comfort in knowing that the divided house is a historical constant: the Armagnacs and the Burgundians; Catholics and Huguenots; Catholics and Anglicans; Gibellines and Guelfs; Roundheads and Cavaliers; Jacobins and Girondins: Irish Catholics and Protestants; Sunnis and Shiites. And the U.S. of course has always divided into Red and Blue, the slave and the free states. I don’t know that it makes it any easier to stand, but maybe the road to hope leads through resignation.